Chapter 232: Uncle!!! I’m Sorry!!!
by cnwebnovelsChapter 232: Uncle!!! I’m Sorry!!!
“Dad… isn’t that… isn’t that going a bit far?” Mao Qi stammered, his mind refusing to keep up.
“Exaggerated, my ass. Why would I lie to you? Would I ever hurt you?” Mao Rusong roared.
This was only because Mao Qi was his own flesh and blood. Had anyone else made him this angry, Mao Rusong would not have bothered cursing them.
He would have killed them.
And Mao Rusong was not exaggerating to frighten his son. He believed every word. The wording might be extravagant. The situation was not.
It was not only because of yesterday, because of the way Gu Ruibo had behaved toward Wu Chen. It was also because of today. At noon that very day, Gu Ruibo and Mao Rusong had met again.
They had talked at length.
From everything Gu Ruibo said, directly and between the lines, Mao Rusong had come away with an unmistakable impression: Gu Ruibo now regarded Wu Chen as a greater figure than himself. He was practically treating Wu Chen like someone to be revered and catered to. The feeling had been perfectly clear.
So…
Today, Mao Rusong’s estimate of Wu Chen’s standing and ability was higher still than yesterday’s.
Mao Qi paced as he talked, hand still shielding the side of his mouth.
While listening to his father he kept stealing glances at Wu Chen, and the changes across his face were nothing short of theatrical. Over a hundred people stood watching him murmur into the phone, unable to make out a word, with nothing to go on but the expressions crossing his face.
They were a show in themselves. No one knew what earth-shattering news he was hearing.
Two-odd minutes later.
“…You understand?” Mao Rusong asked.
“I understand, I understand, Dad. Don’t worry, I’ll definitely… absolutely…”
Mao Qi could not even work out how to phrase the promise. He was in a cold panic.
He felt that either something terrible was about to happen to him right here on the spot, or that when he got home his father really would break his legs. His father was too angry. And what he had said was too frightening by far.
“All right, all right…” Mao Rusong cut him off, then asked, “Is Mr. Wu there beside you?”
“He is…”
“Go and give him the phone.”
“Okay…”
Mao Qi lifted his head again.
The way he looked at Wu Chen now was the way a troublemaking student looks at the school discipline director. Deeply uneasy.
The swagger was gone.
He walked over and stopped about a meter in front of Wu Chen. When he spoke he actually stammered, because he had no idea what to call him.
“Um… that is… my dad…”
He held out the phone.
Wu Chen looked at him, smiled faintly, took the phone, and lifted it to his ear.
“Boss Mao,” he said pleasantly.
“Mr. Wu! A misunderstanding! It’s all a misunderstanding! Truly, this is a flood washing away the Dragon King’s own temple! Look at the mess. That boy of mine, he… he didn’t know you. Ah, and it’s my own fault, I passed word to my people, I just never imagined he’d end up… with you… This isn’t something I could easily explain to him either. He’s young. Still a child, really…”
Leaning very hard on “he’s still a child.”
Mao Qi was eighteen. In the eyes of the law, an adult.
Mao Rusong sounded relaxed and hearty, explaining with laughter woven through his words. In truth he was in a full-blown panic. Who knew how much forbearance Wu Chen had? His son had gathered over a hundred people to beat the man. Put anyone in that position, and even the most broad-minded could not simply brush it aside with a couple of words.
“It’s fine,” Wu Chen said.
He said it far too lightly, with no further reaction of any kind, which somehow made it feel like a brush-off.
“Mr. Wu, hahahaha, I knew it. Mr. Wu would never hold this against a kid. Of course the fault is his, and I’ll deal with him. Don’t you worry, Mr. Wu…”
Mao Rusong kept talking, kept laughing loudly.
He had no other option. For now, all he could do was follow Wu Chen’s lead.
Afterward he would certainly have to find some other way to smooth this over, or he would never rest easy.
Mao Qi stood directly opposite Wu Chen, close enough to hear not only Wu Chen’s words but the voice leaking from the phone. He knew what his father was saying.
Which only made him more anxious.
His father was addressing this young man named Wu Chen with deference in every single sentence.
“All right, let’s leave it there for now, Boss Mao. I have things to attend to,” Wu Chen said, apparently unwilling to talk long.
“Of course, of course. Then if I could trouble you to hand the phone back to my boy, Mr. Wu…” Mao Rusong said at once.
Wu Chen passed it over.
Mao Qi took it, cupped his hand over his mouth again, and walked several steps away.
Nobody knew what Mao Rusong said to him after that. It went on for a full minute more, with Mao Qi grunting his assent, nodding again and again, agreeing to everything.
Soon enough, Mao Qi ended the call.
He put the phone away and turned to Wu Chen with a thoroughly unnatural look on his face, wanting to say something and clearly at a loss for how to begin.
Over a hundred people were watching him. Some were still waiting for the word to attack. Others had already sensed that something was badly off.
They had all seen it: Wu Chen taking Mao Rusong’s call, exchanging a few brief words. And the tone of him, the words he had chosen, had sounded very wrong indeed.
“No fight after all?” Wu Chen spoke first, smiling faintly at Mao Qi.
“No, no, no fight. It was a misunderstanding!”
Mao Qi had remembered how to speak. He raised his hands to gesture, then caught sight of the brass knuckles still on his fingers. He pulled them off at once and shoved them into his pocket, visibly tense.
“That is… a misunderstanding… Mr. W—”
He had been about to say Mr. Wu. But after the briefest pause, he changed the address outright.
“Uncle! I was wrong, Uncle! I didn’t know you and my dad were… friends. Uncle… Uncle Wu… this was all a misunderstanding…”
As he spoke, Mao Qi pressed his palms together and shook them in appeal, gesturing all the while, forcing out a smile.
He had inherited his father’s “gift” beautifully.
Not only did he apologize, he moved straight into ingratiating himself.
The hundred and more around them went blank as one.
Uncle?
They had to call him Uncle?!
The shock scrambled the very logic of it. Setting everything else aside, Wu Chen looked to be in his twenties. The suit lent him some maturity, but even so he looked twenty-three, twenty-four at most.
Mao Qi was eighteen.
A few years between them.
Uncle?!
“No more swearing?” Wu Chen asked him.
“How would I dare? I was wrong, Uncle, I really was wrong. I apologize to you, sincerely!”
Mao Qi bowed to Wu Chen. Then he spun around, pointed at the cluster of rich kids by the sports cars, and shouted, “Who the fuck was swearing just now? Get over here and apologize to my uncle!”
As he shouted, his back to Wu Chen, he was signaling frantically at his friends with his eyes and hands, begging them to play along.
“Uncle, sorry!”
“Uncle, sorry!”
“Sorry!”
Many of them apologized to Wu Chen wearing expressions of total bewilderment.
Mao Qi was the big brother of this circle, and his pull was astonishing. The whole group had been stunned by his sudden turn. Seeing him this frightened, some of them began to understand. They had likely crossed someone even his father dared not cross.
“Fuck, can you do it together? And the rest of you, come on, come on, everybody apologize to our uncle…”
Mao Qi gestured at the crowd, his expression intimidating.
“Come on! With me!”
He shouted it, then turned back to Wu Chen, drew himself up straight as an obedient schoolboy, and bowed.
“Uncle, I’m sorry!”
“UNCLE!!! WE’RE SORRY!!!”
A hundred and more voices actually called it out along with him, the whole dark ring of them bowing at once.
It was quite a spectacle.
Something subtle crossed Wu Chen’s face.
In truth, his reading of Mao Qi was that this kid’s prospects had no ceiling. He was still young, of course, fresh out of senior high and a spoiled brat. But he already knew how to bend when bending was called for and stand tall when it was not. His ability to rally people was formidable. And he had a real talent for winning people over.
Embarrassing?
Mao Qi did not find it embarrassing. Or rather, this was the kind of embarrassment he could live with.
The plaza fell quiet for a moment.
“Disperse,” Wu Chen said with a smile.
“Disperse, disperse, all of you get the hell out of here, go on…”
Mao Qi snapped upright and began waving them off, then turned to Wu Chen. “Uncle, I’ll be going, then.”
With that he turned and left at a brisk walk, very nearly a run.
The hundred-odd scattered like startled birds, all of them moving fast.
“He Xinxin… and where do you think you’re going?”
Wu Chen spoke suddenly, stopping He Xinxin just as she tried to slip away in the confusion.